Stitches, Showing Through
by bookEnd
Summary: Rocco Colasanto has strange dreams and strange people in his shop. Written for the Doctor Who Minor Characters Ficathon on LiveJournal. Spoilers, obviously, for Turn Left; also for the S4 finale.


Rocco Colasanto missed his family.

When he awoke, he wasn't sure what that had meant.

* * *

Quarter to six in the morning was usually a quiet time. He would be in the middle of setting up the shop for the day, unless there had been a power cut in the night and the alarm clock had failed to sound, in which case he'd still be sleeping peacefully next to his wife.

The years they had owned the shop had failed to teach him to wake naturally at five in the morning but the children would always be awake by six, as if they all had their own internal alarms to wake them at six on the dot, and once the children were awake, everyone was.

He would hurry downstairs to find that Antonio had all but finished setting up, all on his own, and make him agree to wake him next time. (He wouldn't, though.)

There were always a few people around, heading home from nights out or on very early morning runs, but normally the first customers wouldn't be for at least another half-hour.

And then they tended not to enter at a run and demand Hobnobs on pain of the world ending.

* * *

"Soon as in ten minutes soon?" the skinny man demanded, wild-eyed, wild-haired. He didn't seem to expect an answer as he immediately continued, "Donna, look down the back! Over there! Just one should be enough!"

"Oatie Bix!" The somewhat familiar red-haired woman pulled a packet of biscuits off the shelf and waved them.

"Accept no substitute!"

"Hobnobs!"

The man bounded over to Donna, energy and excitement sparking off him, and declared, "No, chocolate will just aggravate it!"

It was probably madness to leave them alone for even a minute.

* * *

"-if somebody hadn't eaten all of them! Do you have some sort of alien Hobnob sense or something? Like Spiderman's Spidey-sense?" he heard as he hurried back down the stairs.

"They're biscuits! What else I am supposed to do with them?"

"Save the world?"

"Once! It happened once!"

"Once now! What do we do, tell the monster that it's never happened before and ask it politely to please come back later?"

The man was looking thoughtful as Rocco entered. "Worth a try, I suppose…"

He immediately brightened at the sight of the battered biscuit tin Rocco was holding out. "Hobnobs?"

"You do, don't you," Donna said.

Taking a bite confirmed them to indeed be Hobnobs, plain, original, brilliant Hobnobs with no chocolate content that might aggravate 'it', and the half-biscuit was dropped into his coat pocket followed by the biscuit tin.

Rocco blinked. That was impossible. Yet the biscuit tin was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

He rang up the five-pound note that the woman gave him after a brief dispute about who should have what in their pockets, feeling as if this action, repeated throughout the day, somehow made more sense of the situation.

There was a strange noise from outside; a cry that managed to be a chirping and a roar in one. The man cast a glance at the clock and fled. Receiving her four pounds and one penny in change, Donna made to follow him.

"Wait!"

She turned.

"The biscuit tin," Rocco said, "it belong to my mother."

The noise came again, louder, and, somehow being heard over it, a voice yelling "Donna!"

Donna smiled. "I'll make sure it's returned."

He believed her.

* * *

It occurred to him just as the delivery arrived that the children would be pleased because now it was their turn to have their chocolate biscuits again.

* * *

Sometimes the dreams are not so bad. The picture is bright enough that he can see to the next day, even if there are shadows around. They lose everything, except, most importantly, each other. The fact that they are all together is hopeful.

He dreams of everyone, family and friends, gathered around and singing at the shadows, to frighten them away, to make a home of this.

He sees Donna there, red hair and fire, and wonders how he missed her before. He notices her and who is not there, and it dissolves into confusion that he will remember nothing of in the morning.

* * *

The biscuit tin reappeared on the kitchen table two days later, to Rocco's relief and everyone else's mystification. At least it looked like their biscuit tin, but he had to admit that it hadn't used to refill itself every night.

* * *

The calendar claimed it was summer. The weather refuted that strongly. It meant that the ice creams failed to sell (except to the four teenage girls who came in dressed in short skirts, sandals, sunglasses and other summery things beginning with 'S', giggling and declaring their determination to have a summer, even as the goosebumps were visible on their arms), but the cigarettes, mints and various small items sold very well indeed, mainly due to those diving in to shelter from the rain.

* * *

"-like to see that."

"Oh, I'm sure you would," Donna laughed, ducking through the door out of the rain. "Maybe if you're very very _nice _to me."

Rocco looked up and beamed. "Ah! The Hobnobs were good?"

"Sorry?" The smile faded from her face.

"When you were here before, with a man…" he trailed off.

Donna's companion was wearing an expression that very clearly warned that going any further would not be a good idea.

Donna raised a hand to her head absently.

"The weather is not good," Rocco said hastily, gesturing to the rain-splattered window and the grey clouds beyond. If there had been any sad trouble between her and the manic man, he did not wish to disturb her.

"Bring on global warming," she agreed, the slightly troubled look fading.

"Jack Harkness, very pleased to meet you." Jack flashed a dazzling grin that couldn't quite mask his obvious interest in steering the conversation away from the subject of any previous visit. "And this _gorgeous_ woman is Donna, whom I am being very nice to."

"Donna, bella donna, beautiful lady!"

"Hey," Maria protested cheerily, catching the last sentence as she exited the store room.

"Rocco Colasanto and this, this is my bella donna, my wonderful wife, Maria!"

Rocco pressed a kiss to her cheek as she moved to stand beside him. She laughed.

A growl of thunder echoed her. Donna sighed and Jack bought her a chocolate bar.

"Is it really as sunny in Italy as it looks in the brochure?" she asked, around bites of the chocolate.

"Oh, sun, sun, sun! Sun never goes down, even at night!" he joked.

She laughed. "Why'd you leave then?"

"Is good here! My father get work here, after the war. No work in Italy. He work for the brick factories in Bedford, then we join him."

* * *

When the rain stopped forty-five minutes later, Rocco and Maria had sold Donna and Jack three chocolate bars, four tubes of mints, two packets of chewing gum and a packet of Starburst and had given them the stories, as requested, of their emigrations, experiences, families, meeting and the path from that day to this.

"You travel, you make sure you see my village."

"And mine!"

Donna asked for, and noted down, the names and locations.

"I'll make sure to," she promised.

He believed her.

* * *

Sometimes the dreams are terrible, terrifying. There is little future ahead; there is nothing and he can put on a brave face, a happy face, but he cannot save his family.

The fact they are all together- Maria, Mamma, Francesca, Antonio, even the children- makes it all so much worse: there is no hope for any of them, not even those whose future should far outweigh their past.

He holds Maria as she cries and then he cannot even do that.

Sometimes the children wake screaming and remember nothing but the fear.

* * *

An old man came in one afternoon and bought tea bags and a box of chocolates.

He had never seen him before, yet he was as vaguely, unsettlingly familiar as Donna and he looked at Rocco as if he might recognise him too.

More than that, he looked at him as if he _knew_ he should recognise him and it saddened him he could not.

He waved goodbye as he left; a strange wave that paused for a moment or two too long, almost a salute.

He returned the wave, and the pause. He knew that it probably looked odd, but some part of his mind, perhaps the same part that produced the dreams, or nightmares, felt it to be the right thing to do.

* * *

If the man missing from the dreams was present at that moment, he'd talk about residual memories of a negated timeline caused by proximity to the nexus point, the centre of that universe, and understand a great deal less than he thought.

* * *

Quarter to eleven at night was usually a quiet time. He'd be in the middle of tidying up in preparation for closing time, but not shutting down just yet though more customers were unlikely. He would never close till eleven; eleven was the closing time on the door and so they were open till eleven.

Occasionally, they would get a customer or two, who had found their house drunk dry or were on night duty, but normally the bell over the door remained silent.

And if it did ring, its tone was not usually followed by the sound of someone demanding chocolate on pain of the end of the world.

* * *

Rocco slept without dreaming that night. Saving the world was tiring work.

Next to him, Maria dreamed everyday, extraordinary dreams as did the other Colasantos, the Merchandanis and the Nobles, just like every other human being.

Maybe everything was as it was before it was before. Maybe things changed, one way or another. Maybe what happened had the appearance of something else.

* * *

If a person can only be said to be dead when the ripples they have caused in the universe have faded away, does anyone ever die?


End file.
